Windows98/NT Boot Story..Almost Panic City

[awwall]

Interesting problem encountered with Windows98 and WindowNT. Any Comments ?

Set the Scene:

I had been working with Windows98 most of the day, no problems of any kind. Installed a new virus detector(which one is not relevant). Required re-boot. Rebooted machine (machine is dual boot). Selected to go back into Windows98. Everything looked normal. All the usual post stuff, Windows splash screen, then blank screen before desktop is displayed. End of line. Black screen never turned into desktop.

Instant Panic sets in. Tried hard boot 3 more times, same thing. Tried power off twice, same thing. Tried NT, NT hung at blue screen booting. No error messages from either operating system. Spent about an hour boot..boot..boot. Just knew re-install was just around the corner.

Lights come on:

Know all of you have been here. After shere exhaustion, BOOM, it hits you out of the blue. Sometime back during the day, I had shelled to DOS to print something. What I was printing was 3 pages, I only needed the first page. Printer ran out of paper after 1st sheet(all I needed anyway). Said to myself, I'll reload you later. The laser printer alarmed, then went into SLEEP mode later(no lights you see) and I no longer paid any attention to it. This was the whole problem. Reset the printer and Windows & NT booted like a charm. Apparently during hardware check phase, both of these operating systems locked when they saw the printer error.

Question Time:

Is there anyway that anyone knows of to make these systems tell you what they are doing, while they are doing it during boot up? Would have saved me bunches of time and headache and adreniline pump.

The windows bootlog.txt file showed none of this, went there first.

Moral:

If you have trouble booting into windows, check all your external devices for errors.

aw


[This message has been edited by awwall (edited 10-15-99).]

[BBA]

Thats about the weirdest thing I have heard about a printer.

BBA

[Pantion]

Pretty strange that a printer error to lock-up a OS from booting correctly. Anyway who undertstands Micosoft and windows...

If you want to know what does windows 9x does on every step of its boot process you can try step by step confirmation boot method. There you can see what happens... of course not all of it, but just a taste of all the bunch of things win9x loads...

[Bronco]

Rule #1:

Turn off Printer before shutdown.

Rule #2:

See Rule #1

[jeana]

Something that might be helpful is to enable logging to BOOTLOG.TXT, and then to look at the file using "BootLogAnalyzer" (I first found it at www.bootdisk.com (http://www.bootdisk.com) .

But in a case as weird as this, who knows?

[awwall]

I know this sounds like a crazy problem, but it did occur. I tried the Bootlog avenue, but no good. Bootlog.txt only had 3 lines in it upon its' examination. Normal bootlog here has a couple hundred lines in it.

I did save off a copy of a good bootlog and now can compare if I have another problem. If you don't save off a good copy you have NOTHING to check against. Something everyone might consider!!

thanks for replies

aw

[Swarog]

I'd say there is another way!
Look for "fail" line in the bootlog and you should locate the problem.
You might also want to try to look for detcrash.log file in you sys which will tell you any hardware conflicts you may have.
There's yet a better solution--get Linux and it will inform you what it's doing step by step, so you'll always know.
I'm currently in a process of rebuilding my desktop so I'm forced to use M$ W98 with my laptop thanks to a great Rockwell HCF winmodem that will not work w/ Linux. The chances that the company will realese anything for Linux are slimmer than a prisonner after four years of concentration camp and I'm greatly dissatisfied w/ M$ os performance (even though I use Opera it crashes 2-3 times a day!!!!).
Anyway, any suggestions (other than buying an external modem) would be greatly appreciated?
Thanks!
Swarog

[psyklone]

you could also hit ESC as the splash screen comes up to see what it is doing. i had a strange encounter with a printing problem at bootup just recently as well.
when my friend would turn his computer on, his display would never come up (his monitor was hosed) but his printer would start printing "OS Load in progress..... Starting Windows 95 .."
i was like WHAT THE HELL? well it turns out he had some print screen program loading in his autoexec.bat
anyways, if you hit ESC at the splash screen it will hop you back out to a DOS prompt that will tell you what the computer is loading/doing at the time.

-z